I never quite understand why the Finder gets so much hate. Personally I think it’s quite ok. I especially like columns navigation, quite effective for me to get around.
It does make me wonder though, how do you feel about System 7.0 Finder?
I have similar feelings about the Finder and also don't quite get the love for Windows Explorer. It's just ok and if it were practical to replace it with just about any common Linux file manager on my Windows boxes I'd do so without a second thought.
NeXT/Mac column view are great and should be table stakes in a file manager in my opinion.
Finder used to be a lot worse, with tabs and once you've got all the shortcuts down it's not too bad. Spring loaded folders are really handy. Some time around 10.10 they added a shortcut for showing invisible files, which is absolutely essential for any developer. If I had to pick one area to improve, besides the ds_store littering it'd be general network file system support, SMB has always been a second class citizen and even AFP is just slow.
It does make me wonder though, how do you feel about System 7.0 Finder?